Dark Mind Rising

by Julia Keller

  To doing what I think she’s done.

  “Hey, Sara.”

  Sara flinched. Her head flicked toward the sound. She hadn’t seen Violet approaching. The park was growing darker by the minute; the shadows of the trees made sharply pointed stripes that lay across the wide expanse of grass. Wind hissed through the hedges lining the gravel path. The air smelled chilly, with the faint tang of cinnamon that air on New Earth always carried, thanks to the Scent Corps, a team of engineers who custom-crafted the atmosphere.

  “Hey,” Sara replied. Her tone was defensive, wary.

  She stepped out of the light. Violet could no longer make out the details of her face.

  “How’s the job hunt coming?” Violet asked. She kept her voice blandly cordial. It was hard to do that because her heart was pounding.

  Sara shrugged. “Can we walk? You said you wanted to take a walk.”

  “Sure.”

  The park was almost deserted. A young woman jogged past them; she was cooling down after a run, Violet surmised, because her husky breathing did not match the relative ease of her pace. Another woman went by in the opposite direction, wrangling a small leashed dog who had a yen to lunge and paw at the grass on the margins of the path.

  Sara plunged her hands deep in the pockets of her jacket. Her head bobbed forward as she walked.

  “I used to be so jealous of you and Shura,” she muttered. “I’d watch you guys go around this park for hours and hours and hours. Talking and talking. Or just walking side by side.” She sniffed. “I’ve never had a friend like that. Never.”

  So you were spying on us? That’s incredibly creepy. Disturbing and creepy. Violet didn’t say it out loud because she didn’t want to rile her. Eventually, if Violet’s hunch was correct, some riling would have to occur, but for now, she had a lot more information she needed to get from her.

  “We don’t hang out that much these days,” Violet said. “Not since she graduated from medical school and opened her lab. And I opened my business.”

  Sara made a little snorting sound. “Right. Your business.”

  Violet fought to keep her face neutral. “Yeah.”

  “Why’d you want to have a detective agency, anyway? I mean, I hear it’s not going so well.” Sara snickered. “I mean, you’ve got a lot of bills. The stack’s about a mile high.”

  The only way Sara would know that was if she’d snooped around the office when Violet wasn’t there. And if Sara had snooped around the office, she could very well have set the trigger-trap on Jonetta’s keyboard.

  “How would you know?” Violet asked mildly.

  Sara shrugged. “Lucky guess.”

  Violet still didn’t react. There was more she needed to know.

  “Business will pick up,” Violet said. “And as for why I started it—well, it’s kind of cool to help people.”

  Sara didn’t answer.

  They came to the end of the row and made a right turn, continuing up the other side of the park.

  “You used to think so, too,” Violet said softly.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You used to like helping people, same as me. When you first started working in transport logistics. Remember? Two years ago? I needed to get to Old Earth. I didn’t have official permission. And you came through. You helped me get there. Which helped me save my father’s life.”

  For several minutes, the only sound was the light, rhythmic splashing of the fountain in the center of the park, where six jets of water—nearly invisible now in the semidarkness—leaped high in the air and then fell in the pool in a simple symphony of delicate splashes.

  “I loved my job,” Sara said. Her voice was wistful.

  “I bet you miss it. Cleaning apartments—that’s not exactly the same thing.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “And that makes you mad.”

  “Yeah. It does.”

  Violet could sense the anger rising again in Sara. She hoped to use that anger, to exploit it.

  “I mean,” Violet said, “it’s not really fair, is it? You worked hard, and you did a good job. Everybody said so. And then—boom—you’re out. Unemployed. Just because things changed. Just because my dad opened the border and let in the people from Old Earth. There weren’t so many trips back and forth to Old Earth anymore. So they shut down the transport sites and stopped making pods. It wasn’t fair. And you weren’t the only one, right? Other people were in the same situation. A job they’d trained for, a job they loved with all their heart—gone. Over.”

  “Oh, the others did just fine,” Sara shot back. “They used their connections. Or they were just lucky. They got other jobs. But not me. Not me.” She made a fist and stared at it. “I started thinking about all of this when Frank Bainbridge died last year. It was an accident; a pod exploded when he was standing too close to it. He was the one who’d started decommissioning the pods, one by one. I guess I was supposed to be sad that he died, but all I could think about was, Yeah, take that, old man. It backfired on him. His plan to shut down the transport system—it ended up killing him. Ha. It felt good to me, seeing his family suffer.” She shuddered. She didn’t seem to care anymore how that sounded. She stared at Violet. “I loved my job. I was good at it. Then they took it all away from me. They destroyed my life.”

  “And you deserved better.”

  “Yeah. You bet your ass I did.” Anger invaded Sara’s tone, like soldiers swarming over a hill. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. New Earth was supposed to be different. It was supposed to be fair. How did this happen? All the things our parents were told about this great new world. Well, when it came right down to it, New Earth turned out to be no better than the old. Maybe worse.”

  “Worse?”

  “Yeah. Because nobody had any hope for Old Earth. That’s what my parents told me. It was rotten and horrible, and everybody knew that. But New Earth—New Earth made promises. And then it broke them. New Earth gave us hope. And then it took it away. That’s the worst thing of all.”

  She had increased her pace to match her mounting rage. Violet almost had to run to keep up with her.

  “I don’t know, Sara. Nobody ever said things would stay the same on New Earth. Things can’t stay the same. Life is always changing. It has to. Sometimes changes are good and sometimes they’re bad, but change has to happen. I know you get that.”

  A flamethrower would have generated less propulsive heat than Sara’s response. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” She shook her head. Something was rising in her, something dark and final. “I don’t have to listen to any more bullshit from you, Violet. It was that father of yours who made this lousy world in the first place. And who brought in the Intercept.” She uttered an evil-sounding laugh. “You may think it’s gone, but it’s—” She cut herself off.

  “Sara.” Violet reached out and clutched the sleeve of Sara’s jacket. “Wait.”

  Sara jerked her arm out of Violet’s grasp. Her breathing was shallow and ragged. “What do you want from me?”

  “You have to stop, Sara. And you have to stop now.”

  “Stop what?”

  “Don’t play dumb. I know what you’ve done, Sara. I know all about it. You got Rodney Loring to help you rebuild the Intercept protocol. You reactivated it. You’ve been infiltrating the minds of people you hate—people who kept their jobs in transportation or who got other jobs when you couldn’t. And you put terrible thoughts in their heads. Unbearable thoughts. It was your way of getting revenge on everyone you’re jealous of—including me. That’s why you went after Delia Tolliver, isn’t it? To hurt me.” Violet paused to catch her breath. The memory of Delia’s face made it hard for her to go on. But she had to. “It’s not right, Sara. You know it’s not right. So you have to stop. Now.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Sara, this is murder.”

  “Go to hell.”

  Sara turned and ran, jumping off the path and h
eaving herself toward the interior of the park. Violet was quicker, though, and caught up in a flash. A thought skittered across her mind as she grabbed Sara’s arm: I need to call Kendall and get some backup.

  She’d needed to have brief physical contact with Sara to set the rest of her plan into motion, but once that was done …

  Well, she didn’t know what would happen next. She hadn’t thought things out that far in advance.

  Sara whirled around. It was too dark for Violet to see the expression on her face, or to note—as she would learn in a flurry of seconds—that Sara had raised a fist. The fist went crashing into the side of Violet’s jaw.

  Violet flew backward. Her head bounced against the ground. She moaned once.

  And then lay motionless.

  31

  Confession

  She was floating in a strange green sea.

  No: She was flying across a vivid orange sky.

  No: She was sleeping on a fluffy bed of pink cotton candy, and the bedposts were made of black licorice, and it was sweet and cool and—

  “Vi. Vi? Vi!”

  Pain shot through her head as she fought her way up to consciousness again. When she opened her eyes, Jonetta’s face was positioned entirely too close.

  “Okay,” Violet muttered. “Okay, I’m awake.”

  “She’s conscious!” Jonetta yelled, apparently calling out to others in the vicinity, but she failed to turn her head away, so Violet received the full blast.

  The next thing she knew, she was being helped to her feet by Kendall. Behind him hovered a concerned-looking Shura, and behind Shura loomed an equally concerned-looking Tin Man. Violet recognized the surroundings; she was in her office.

  Shura edged forward. “How’s your balance?” she said.

  “What happened?”

  “Tin Man found you in the park and carried you back here.”

  Violet blinked. Her thoughts were still fuzzy and disorganized. Kendall continued to hold her up, and if he’d let go of her, she would have flopped right back down on the floor.

  Her thought was a simple one:

  I’m too old for this crap.

  Shura was shining some kind of light in her right eye and then her left eye. Violet jerked and tried to recoil, but Shura held her chin firmly.

  “I don’t think it’s a concussion,” Shura said. She lowered the penlight and snapped it off. “But I’ll need to do tests at my office to be sure. Tin Man, will you and Kendall help me get her into a chair so I can—”

  “Wait,” Violet said. “Where’s Sara?”

  Kendall’s answer was exactly what she didn’t want to hear. “We don’t know. When you didn’t respond to Tin Man’s console call, he checked with Jonetta. She said you’d gone to the park to meet Sara. He found you there. Out cold. No sign of Sara. He carried you back here.”

  Shura was talking again now, in a tone so accusatory that Violet would’ve preferred the penlight. “What were you thinking? Why did you go to the park alone? Sara’s dangerous.”

  “Well, I know that now,” Violet replied, a trifle defensively. “I didn’t know it then. She pretty much confessed.” She gave them a brief rundown of the conversation she’d had with Sara. Then she turned to Kendall. “I don’t know if she took the housecleaning job in order to get access to your safe or if it was just a lucky accident for her, but that’s how she was able to get the Intercept. At least a portion of it. Enough to hack into the minds of our victims.”

  “How did she know what I kept in the safe?” Kendall asked.

  “She probably didn’t. Not at first, anyway,” Violet replied. “Think of how many times we’ve hinted about it on our console calls over the past two years. We never mentioned it outright—but we didn’t need to. Sara only had to overhear your side of the conversation once or twice to catch on. She might not be a computer genius—but she’s not stupid.”

  “You’re right,” Kendall said. “I usually forgot she was even there. She sort of fades into the woodwork. She’s quiet. And I guess I’m not surprised that she figured it out.”

  “Hold on,” Shura said. “Figured out what? What was in that safe? And how does it relate to the Intercept? You guys destroyed it two years ago. Wasn’t that the whole point of demolishing Protocol Hall?”

  Violet and Kendall exchanged guilty glances. Are you going to handle this one, or should I?

  Violet knew what she had to do. It had been mostly her decision, after all. She was the one who had run back into Protocol Hall at the last second and snatched up the pages.

  She faced the others—Shura, Tin Man, and Jonetta—and, after taking a deep breath, she told them the truth. “We didn’t destroy all of the specifications.”

  “What?” Shura asked. “Why?”

  Violet gave her the only answer she could.

  “I don’t know.” She struggled to put into words something she had only felt, not understood in a conscious way; it was a passionate conviction that lived far below the level of language. “I mean, I guess it just didn’t seem right to completely destroy the Intercept. The technology was so beautiful. And the idea behind it—a perfect world, a safe world—was beautiful, too. So I did what I did. Just in case.”

  “In case what?” Shura said.

  “In case,” Violet answered, “we ever want to reinstall it. If people are ready for it. If the world seems like it can handle it.”

  A suddenly irritated Shura was ready with her response. “I can’t believe you never told me this. I’m supposed to be your best friend.” The way she’d said “supposed to be” made Violet feel a little bit lonely and a lot guilty.

  Tin Man stepped between them. “If anybody has the right to be mad just now, it’s me, okay? I hate the Intercept. I’ve hated it from the day I was born.” He pointed to Kendall and then Violet. “And I’m not sure I can ever forgive you guys for keeping it alive. But that’s not really the point just now, okay? There’s a serial killer out there. And I know two things for sure—one, you have to take her down. Two, my mom would want me to help you do it.”

  “To accomplish that,” Kendall said grimly, “we’ve got to find her first.”

  Violet shrugged. “No worries.”

  Tin Man’s jaw shifted. He appeared to be holding back a great deal of skepticism. “What does that mean?”

  “It means,” Violet said, “that I know exactly where she is. Jonetta, how about giving me a hand over here so I can show them?”

  * * *

  The picture wavered, disappeared, and then reappeared again. For a moment it acquired the visual characteristics of pea soup, complete with the lumps of sickly green goo. Then that, too, vanished, and in its place was a very clear image of a shelf of red-hued rock.

  They were clustered around Violet’s console: Shura, Kendall, Jonetta, and Tin Man.

  “Give me the location coordinates,” Violet said.

  Jonetta rattled off the longitude and latitude in a firm, clear voice. “And you know what that means,” she added.

  “Old Earth.” Violet pronounced the words carefully. “Sara has gone down to Old Earth.”

  Tin Man still wasn’t buying it. “How can you possibly know that?” he said. “Where’s that picture coming from?”

  Violet quickly explained the principle of the chip-jack. “Rez invented it back in our days at Protocol Hall. It’s a transmitter that can hijack an Intercept signal. If the chip-jack comes into contact with somebody’s Intercept chip, even for a second or so, it picks up the coordinates and so later it lets you—well, eavesdrop. That’s the best way to describe it. You see what they’re seeing. Hear what they’re hearing. It’s like you’re right there with them, but it’s only temporary. After a while, it stops working.

  “I swiped it across Sara’s chip when we were in the park,” Violet added. “I grabbed her jacket. Right before she punched me.”

  “Hold on. Just hold on,” Tin Man interjected. “I know that our Intercept chips were never removed, but they’re not activated an
ymore. They’re not connected to anything.”

  Kendall spoke up. He was in the outer office, using Jonetta’s computer to complete his understanding of what Sara had done and how she had done it.

  “That’s what Sara figured out, with her boyfriend’s unwitting help,” he said. “She knows how to activate individual chips, one at a time. The Intercept archive as a whole isn’t online anymore, but it doesn’t have to be. Sara is pulling bad memories directly out of a victim’s brain—and then she reinserts them at triple the intensity. That’s where the despondency comes from. Whatever idea a person is most vulnerable to, whatever thought or memory makes them feel weak or filled with anguish—that’s what Sara jams back into the brain through the Intercept chip. Over and over again, until they don’t want to live anymore.”

  Tin Man nodded solemnly. “So that’s what happened to my mother.”

  They were all silent for a moment. Jonetta put a hand on his shoulder.

  Shura broke the spell. She pointed to the picture on Violet’s console. “Sara’s on the move.”

  “She won’t get away,” Violet said calmly. “We’ll track her with the chip-jack. It’ll work.”

  “You’d better hope so.” Kendall waved a hand over the keyboard at which he had just been feverishly working. “I just hacked into Sara’s file. That’s how I know how she operates. She’s got big plans—big, terrible plans.”

  “So Sara just left her plans in a file that anybody could find?” Violet said.

  “Not anybody,” Kendall replied. “Me.”

  “Oh. Right.” Violet nodded. Sometimes she forgot just how brilliant he was.

  She headed over to Jonetta’s desk so that she could stand beside him. Peering down at the computer screen, she saw gyrating orange numbers that meant nothing to her, but she knew they meant a great deal to Kendall.

  “Okay,” Violet said. “What’s this master plan of hers?”

  “Right now, she’s able to control a few people at a time. Here and there. But each time she succeeded, her ambition increased.”

  “Her ambition to do what?”

  “To kill us all. Or, to be more specific, to have us kill ourselves.”